Send HTML emails with Python

Question

How to send HTML content in email using Python? I can send simple texts.

Andrew_Hare_34211 · Answer

From Python v2.7.14 documentation - 18.1.11. email: Examples:

Here’s an example of how to create an HTML message with an alternative plain text version:

#! /usr/bin/python

import smtplib

from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

# me == my email address
# you == recipient's email address
me = "my@email.com"
you = "your@email.com"

# Create message container - the correct MIME type is multipart/alternative.
msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
msg['Subject'] = "Link"
msg['From'] = me
msg['To'] = you

# Create the body of the message (a plain-text and an HTML version).
text = "Hi!
How are you?
Here is the link you wanted:
http://www.python.org"
html = """\

  
  
    Hi!

       How are you?

       Here is the link you wanted.
    
  

"""

# Record the MIME types of both parts - text/plain and text/html.
part1 = MIMEText(text, 'plain')
part2 = MIMEText(html, 'html')

# Attach parts into message container.
# According to RFC 2046, the last part of a multipart message, in this case
# the HTML message, is best and preferred.
msg.attach(part1)
msg.attach(part2)

# Send the message via local SMTP server.
s = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
# sendmail function takes 3 arguments: sender's address, recipient's address
# and message to send - here it is sent as one string.
s.sendmail(me, you, msg.as_string())
s.quit()

Ryan_Ginstrom_10658 · Answer

You might try using my mailer module.

from mailer import Mailer
from mailer import Message

message = Message(From="me@example.com",
                  To="you@example.com")
message.Subject = "An HTML Email"
message.Html = """Hi!

   How are you?

   Here is the link you wanted."""

sender = Mailer('smtp.example.com')
sender.send(message)

user_7499223 · Answer

for python3, improve @taltman 's answer:

use email.message.EmailMessage instead of email.message.Message to construct email.
use email.set_content func, assign subtype='html' argument. instead of low level func set_payload and add header manually.
use SMTP.send_message func instead of SMTP.sendmail func to send email.
use with block to auto close connection.

from email.message import EmailMessage
from smtplib import SMTP

# construct email
email = EmailMessage()
email['Subject'] = 'foo'
email['From'] = 'sender@test.com'
email['To'] = 'recipient@test.com'
email.set_content('red color text', subtype='html')

# Send the message via local SMTP server.
with smtplib.SMTP('localhost') as s:
    s.login('foo_user', 'bar_password')
    s.send_message(email)

user_62048 · Answer

Here's sample code. This is inspired from code found on the Python Cookbook site (can't find the exact link)

def createhtmlmail (html, text, subject, fromEmail):
    """Create a mime-message that will render HTML in popular
    MUAs, text in better ones"""
    import MimeWriter
    import mimetools
    import cStringIO

    out = cStringIO.StringIO() # output buffer for our message 
    htmlin = cStringIO.StringIO(html)
    txtin = cStringIO.StringIO(text)

    writer = MimeWriter.MimeWriter(out)
    #
    # set up some basic headers... we put subject here
    # because smtplib.sendmail expects it to be in the
    # message body
    #
    writer.addheader("From", fromEmail)
    writer.addheader("Subject", subject)
    writer.addheader("MIME-Version", "1.0")
    #
    # start the multipart section of the message
    # multipart/alternative seems to work better
    # on some MUAs than multipart/mixed
    #
    writer.startmultipartbody("alternative")
    writer.flushheaders()
    #
    # the plain text section
    #
    subpart = writer.nextpart()
    subpart.addheader("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "quoted-printable")
    pout = subpart.startbody("text/plain", [("charset", 'us-ascii')])
    mimetools.encode(txtin, pout, 'quoted-printable')
    txtin.close()
    #
    # start the html subpart of the message
    #
    subpart = writer.nextpart()
    subpart.addheader("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "quoted-printable")
    #
    # returns us a file-ish object we can write to
    #
    pout = subpart.startbody("text/html", [("charset", 'us-ascii')])
    mimetools.encode(htmlin, pout, 'quoted-printable')
    htmlin.close()
    #
    # Now that we're done, close our writer and
    # return the message body
    #
    writer.lastpart()
    msg = out.getvalue()
    out.close()
    print msg
    return msg

if __name__=="__main__":
    import smtplib
    html = 'html version'
    text = 'TEST VERSION'
    subject = "BACKUP REPORT"
    message = createhtmlmail(html, text, subject, 'From Host ')
    server = smtplib.SMTP("smtp_server_address","smtp_port")
    server.login('username', 'password')
    server.sendmail('sender@host.com', 'target@otherhost.com', message)
    server.quit()

user_6037997 · Answer

Simplest solution for sending email from Organizational account in Office 365:

from O365 import Message

html_template =     """ 
            
            
                
            
            
                    {}
            
            
        """

final_html_data = html_template.format(df.to_html(index=False))

o365_auth = ('sender_username@company_email.com','Password')
m = Message(auth=o365_auth)
m.setRecipients('receiver_username@company_email.com')
m.setSubject('Weekly report')
m.setBodyHTML(final_html_data)
m.sendMessage()

here df is a dataframe converted to html Table, which is being injected to html_template

user_13885783 · Answer

I may be late in providing an answer here, but the Question asked a way to send HTML emails. Using a dedicated module like "email" is okay, but we can achieve the same results without using any new module. It all boils down to the Gmail Protocol.

Below is my simple sample code for sending HTML mail only by using "smtplib" and nothing else.

```
import smtplib

FROM = "....@gmail.com"
TO = "another....@gmail.com"
SUBJECT= "Subject"
PWD = "thesecretkey"

TEXT="""
Hello
""" #Your Message (Even Supports HTML Directly)

message = f"Subject: {SUBJECT}
From: {FROM}
To: {TO}
Content-Type: text/html

{TEXT}" #This is where the stuff happens

try:
    server=smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com",587)
    server.ehlo()
    server.starttls()
    server.login(FROM,PWD)
    server.sendmail(FROM,TO,message)
    server.close()
    print("Successfully sent the mail.")
except Exception as e:
    print("Failed to send the mail..", e)
```

user_13696660 · Answer

In case you want something simpler:

from redmail import EmailSender
email = EmailSender(host="smtp.myhost.com", port=1)

email.send(
    subject="Example email",
    sender="me@example.com",
    receivers=["you@example.com"],
    html="Hi, this is HTML body"
)

Pip install Red Mail from PyPI:

pip install redmail

Red Mail has most likely all you need from sending emails and it has a lot of features including:

Documentation: https://red-mail.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

Source code: https://github.com/Miksus/red-mail

Send HTML emails with Python

12 Answers